Free Market Criminal Justice
How Democracy and Laissez Faire Undermine the Rule of Law
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:11th Feb '16
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Free Market Criminal Justice offers a critique of the ideology behind the US criminal justice system. It argues that the distinctive ideology shaping American criminal processes is a commitment to a set of values in institutional design as divided into two categories - "democracy" and "markets". Here, democracy describes the ideas and practices of politically responsive, popularly accountable governance. Markets refers to norms, premises and mechanisms of private ordering in contrast to public management; competition between private agents acting for self-interest. Arguing against recent attempts to re-invigorate democratic processes in criminal justice, this book claims that there are significant downsides to a criminal justice system that favors democratic processes over legal regulation. The commitment to democracy has undermined the rule of law in American criminal justice resulting in mass incarceration and wrongful convictions, particularly as institutional democracy goes hand in hand with the development of market-inspired mechanisms. This book concludes with proposals for reforms to rebuild the rule of law in the criminal process.
"Free Market Criminal Justice is a major advance on past work that has tried to link US punitiveness to its political economy. Recognizing that both democracy and markets operate as regulative ideals in American government, Brown shows us how they combine to produce a criminal process dominated by private ordering and remarkably indifferent to either law or truth. Essential to understanding why our system is both excessive and inadequate. It is hard to see how we can escape mass incarceration without revisiting these constitutive political choices." -Jonathan Simon, Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Center for the Study of Law & Society, UC Berkeley School of Law "Darryl Brown presents an original and convincing diagnosis of the distinctively American ideologies that have produced catastrophic dysfunction in our criminal justice system. His insightful and cogently argued book will prompt fresh thinking among all who are seeking a way out of our addictive reliance on "efficient" procedure and grossly excessive punishment as the solution to every social ill." -Stephen J. Schulhofer, Robert B. McKay Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
ISBN: 9780190457877
Dimensions: 236mm x 163mm x 28mm
Weight: 590g
322 pages